Second Sight

Second Sight

Second Sight was developed for a group show in Transmission Gallery in 2013 called Second Sight, occupying the basement space of the gallery. The piece was participatory, working with a small group of “performers” who all had varying experiences of performing,

from no experience at all to professional dancers. The participants/performers worked together over a few weeks exploring movement without sight in workshops. The final performances took place every day with 3 to 5 performers. It began with a warm up, which was developed during the workshops and was read from a script by the “watcher” (the person with sight in the space, who was responsible for the safety of the performers). Throughout the performance, the performers explore the space with their eyes closed, responding to objects in the installation and responding to movement scores in certain situations (i.e. if they meet another performer in the space they must navigate themselves into a connected position. It’s hard to describe the impact of this performance in writing. The movement is slow, timid and fragile and simultaneously bold and tentative as the performers must remain confidently vulnerable. As an audience coming into the space there is an interesting moment of navigation when they realise that the other bodies in the space cannot see them. This creates a position of power for the audience which is quickly turned on its head as the performers move freely, dominating the space with their unintimidated movement, forcing the audience to make space for them and navigate themselves around the movement of the performance.

In Second Sight, the performers are considered as the primary experiencers of/audience to the work. The work was a process of developing an alternative relationship to a space andto each other. The workshops prior to the performance, were a crucial section and process within the work.